Casting JonBenet

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Casting JonBenet showed up on Netflix this weekend, and I'm not sure what to think about it. The concept is like Room 237 by way of The Arbor; most of the film is actors "auditioning" for parts in some kind of JonBenet movie, but they also give their theories about what really happened to her. It's hard to tell how aware they are of what's going on, so it felt kind of exploitative, but I also thought the ending, where you see overlapping scenes from the "movie" stitched together on a single stage, was really affecting.

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The device she uses is interesting, and worked well in the short format for her Casting Oksana Baiul piece. But I found the little rabbit trails she introduces as the actors talk about stuff outside the Jon Benet script are very distracting at best and ruinous at worst. We also talked about the exploitative feel here, and I think that would have been mitigated if it were shorter, more focused, and made less explicit choices about reenactments. As it is, I would have a hard time recommending this to anyone.

It is entirely possible to make a documentary on the Jon Benet case which is not exploitative. I haven't seen one yet, but surely it is possible. It would fell like the last sequence you mention, which really is incredible, and hints at what might be our natural draw to this crime - the Lynchian levels of domestic tragedy, and a kind of sorrow we all feel about how imperfect our suburban fantasies are.